My Reading Format: Audiobook purchased through Audible.com with a monthly credit in order to judge the Literary Fiction category for the Armchair Audies.

Audiobook Published by: Audible Studios

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Audiobook Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, and Audiobook

Summary from the Publisher:

Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family’s “unnecessary appendage.” Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman’s late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya’s digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut.

My Review

Aaliya is a divorced woman living alone in Beirut. Her family had been happy to marry her off to make room for her half-brothers. However, after her impotent husband divorces her early in their marriage and leaves her with an apartment spacious by Beirut standards, the rift between her and her family grew. While her mother and half-brothers tried every means to force her to give her apartment over to her oldest half-brother, but she refused to live her life at the mercy of others. An Unnecessary Woman tells Aaliya’s story, her childhood lived as the only daughter of a deceased brother, her frustrating marriage, and her life as a book store clerk and literary translator that took her through the Civil War through modern day.

Listening to An Unnecessary Woman was my first literary experience in Beirut. Seeing this city and the cultural and religious changes that took place from Aaliya’s perspective as a divorcee without strong religious faith was fascinating. Aaliya has opinions and she freely shared her stories. As a result this audiobook felt like sitting down with an elderly relative and reliving history through his or her perspective. From time to time Aaliya would wander or wade into something things I was less interested in, but she also snapped me back to attention. At the end, I was so thankful I took the time to sit down with her story. It enhanced my perspective of my own history.

Suzanne Toren was the perfect choice to narrate Aaliya’s story. She innately understood her tone, the pacing of her thoughts, and her stubbornness. As a listener I understood how Aaliya felt about people or places by the way that the name rolled off of her tongue. When Aaliya eavesdropped on her neighbors while they drank their morning coffee, I could see what she was seeing as much by her descriptions as by her tone and inflection. Toren knew Aaliya well and it made An Unnecessary Woman a much more vivid experience than I imagine it would have been in print alone.

While there were times in Aaliya’s story where my attention drifted, I was drawn to her and her devotion to her translations. I could understand how picking up a new book to begin translating into Arabic each January 1st would provide her with purpose and structure. Although she was now an elderly woman and had much wisdom to impart, it was in acknowledging the significance of her past, opening herself to those around her, and seeing herself and her worthiness through the eyes of others that she was able to share her journey and her art. I finished this audiobook thankful that it was nominated for a 2015 Audie Award. Had it not, I may never have come to know Aaliya’s story or the power of Suzanne Toren’s narration.

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Getting back into the swing of things each week is hard. So is finding the quiet time to write a review over the weekend. In order to ease out of the weekend, I’ve decided to begin my blogging week with a mini review.

I read and loved Rosamund Lupton’s debut novel, Sister, so I was excited when I learned that her second novel had been published. It was one of the first books I bought with my Random House gift card a couple of years ago. It was also one of the first books I selected when I sat down to compile my TBR list for Roof Beam Reader’s 2015 TBR Pile Challenge. When I finally picked it up, took off the dust jacket (I never read a hardcover with the dust jacket on), I began the book with great anticipation. I finished it in time to write this Monday Mini post.

Note: While I don’t give away any spoilers in this review, my reaction to the ending may give away more than some readers might like. Proceed with caution.

This book begins by asking the reader to suspend disbelief. Grace, a 39-year-old mother of two, has been severely injured in a school fire. Her consciousness doesn’t remain in her living, breathing body, but leaves it in search of answers as to what happened. Her 16-year-old daughter, Jenny, who was also very injured in the fire, does the same. They see all of the commotion and hear all of the conversations that take place in the hospital. They are acutely aware that this fire was no accident and they work hard to remember every detail and observe as much as they can in order to save their conscious family and themselves. They also have to address the demons within their own relationship. I had no problem letting go and following Lupton’s story because it and the questions surrounding the fire were compelling to me.

It wasn’t until the last quarter or the book that I started to have a hard time. No other unconscious patients make their way into the story, but there is contact with the conscious world that began the process of me pulling away from the story. Then things began to deliberately leap frog to divert suspicion and attention. When the final jump was made, I stopped caring – mostly. I cared enough to get irritated when excuses were made for the arsonist. When things like that happen in a novel I really do feel robbed. Righteous anger is okay. Calling out premeditated acts of destruction and harm is okay. There is nothing wrong with feeling that anger, even hatred. Turning immediately to understanding invalidates the journey I just took with you.

As I write this out, I realize that the ending of this book made me more than irritated. I’m angry and disappointed. It didn’t have to end this way.

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This past weekend I left my sleepy country neighborhood and took a road trip to Charlottesville, VA. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day and I started a new audiobook that immediately sucked me in (You by Catherine Kepnes, narrated by Santino Fontana). I couldn’t have been happier. Even having trouble finding parking didn’t hamper my mood. What’s a little extra driving around when a world of books would soon be at your fingertips?

My first stop was a Crime Wave panel featuring authors Tim Johnston and Mary Kubica. It was a great panel, but I’ll write more about that in another post. This post is all about those narrators.

Photo courtesy of Andi Arndt

The Audio Publishers Association hosted this event at the Virginia Festival of the Book. Andi Arndt was the moderator of this panel, which featured Karen White, Barbara Rosenblat, Shannon Parks (Marguerite Gavin), and Sean Pratt. Walking into that room felt a little like magic to me. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Karen and Andi previously and was happy to see them again. It was also a pleasure to get a chance to listen to the three other veteran narrators talk about how they make audiobooks seem effortless.

The overall focus of the panel was about the art of narrating Mystery/Thrillers and these narrators each took a few minutes to speak about different aspects of recording the genre before answering questions from the audience.

Karen spoke about choosing the proper tone. She has found that capturing the tone correctly is one of the most difficult aspects of narrating an audiobook. She becomes the vessel through which a story is told. For her, choosing just the right tone is about storytelling, the author’s intent, and the overall affect on the audience. In fact, she tries to imagine the response of her listeners as she makes her decisions about tone. It’s easy when she reads to a live crowd. Inside her little recording studio is a much different thing.

Barbara talked about preparing for an audiobook. She was so glad to be in a room filled with fellow “word nerds.” We are all people who are careful about what we read, so it is imperative for her as an audiobook narrator to research books that she narrates. She pays careful attention to proper pronunciations, down to first and second references for names of characters and places. If she mispronounces something, the reader is taken out of the story and the narrator becomes “visible” in a way. She wants to disappear into the story for her listeners. That’s how she knows that she’s done her work properly.

Shannon explored how to maintain separate characters. While finding the voice of each characters is in and of itself a challenge, keeping them straight during a big action scene is even that much more difficult. To make those action scenes work for the listener, she pays careful attention to where each separate character is during each part of the scene. Then, when the a scene becomes fueled with gas, she can take the listeners with her smoothly. While a listener (such as myself) might think an individual narrator might record different characters separately to keep things straight, Shannon does not. She goes from one character’s voice to the next so she doesn’t lose the pacing and rhythm.

Sean talked about pacing and tempo. He began by saying something that makes a lot of sense to me. Fast paced chapters are exhausting. Even in those parts of the story that provide a little downtime, such as a characters’ back story, don’t provide much rest. Narrators have to be able to ride along with the dialog. He used our own day to day storytelling as an example. If you’re excitedly telling a story and you come to a part that leads you a little to the side, you hurry through those “extras” to get back to the meat of what you’re trying to say.

While I enjoyed listening to each of them talk about different aspects of life as an audiobook narrator and answer the questions raised by the audience, it was what came at the end of each narrator’s session that left me in awe. They each read either from some of their recent or favorite works or something fun they found. I was sitting in the front row and I could have almost reached out and touched them as they read. For me as an audiobook geek, this was an absolutely amazing experience. I’ve listened to several of Karen’s audiobooks now and her reading was the most surreal to me. While I’m very familiar with her voice and her work, I’m not used to being able to see her do what she does so well. I loved being able to see the way her whole body gets into the reading, but at the same time I didn’t know what to do with my eyes. I was tempted to just close them and pretend I was in my car, where she usually reads to me. Regardless, she had sold me on The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson.

It wasn’t just Karen’s reading that impressed me and the rest of the audience. Barbara read a piece from the New Yorker entitled “How I Met My Wife.” As the man tells his story he drops the prefixes to his words. She is one dynamic woman and she knew just what to read to us word nerds to make us laugh and hang on her every word and inflection. Shannon read from Ice Shear by M. P. Cooley. Her scene involved a female police officer and a male bad guy. Watching her go from one voice to the next was so impressive. Sean illustrated the pacing needs for back story by reading from a Mickey Spillane novel. I enjoyed how he picked up on humor while you could tell that the story itself was begging to get back to the action.

The session was recorded, so the audience was asked to turn our phones off. I didn’t have enough forethought to take a quick picture of the panel first. I did get a picture of something even more fun – to me, anyway. Recorded Books was there helping to keep the panel running smoothly. They brought photo cards of each of the narrators for the audience to get signed. What more could an audiobook fan ask for (well, other than more audiobooks anyway)? As soon as I got them signed, I took a picture of them to share. The ink wasn’t dry on them before I knew I wanted to collect even more. I loved the idea of narrator trading cards and here are mine!

At the end of the event, I was able to walk along this really nice outdoor mall area with Karen next to the Omni in Charlottesville. It was a beautiful day, a quaint area, and great company. We even ran into Andi and fellow narrator Paul Heitsch at the end. It was a wonderful way to end my afternoon away from home. I may regret not taking more pictures, but I had a wonderful time living in the moment. I wouldn’t change a thing.

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Getting back into the swing of things each week is hard. So is finding the quiet time to write a review over the weekend. In order to ease out of the weekend, I’ve decided to begin my blogging week with a mini review.

It’s Armchair Audies season. In addition to judging the Literary Fiction 2015 Audie category, I’m toying with the idea of judging the Audio Drama category as well. This production of The Hound of the Baskervilles is nominated this year in the Audio Drama category. As it was available inexpensively via Audible.com, I picked it up. In between much longer Literary Fiction nominees, I gave this dramatization a listen. Even if I don’t judge the Audio Drama category (three of the titles are not readily available for less than $20 and the other on Audible is 45 hours long!), I’m glad I picked up this title. Audio dramas make for a fun listen.

While there are local theaters here in the Roanoke area, Southwest Virginia is not known for its theater scene by any stretch of the imagination. I’m sure this comes to no surprise to my readers. Having access to recorded dramatizations from larger theaters helps to make up for that. This production of The Hound of the Baskervilles was no exception. I enjoy the mystery Doyle wrote in general and the cast did a marvelous job of bringing it and all of its characters to life. They brought all of the humor and the intrigue packed into this story right out into my car, making my daily commute entertaining. I also enjoyed the use of sound effects throughout. They were realistic and helped add to the atmosphere of the story. They also gave me just a touch of what it might be like to have actually seen the play in person. This is my second audio drama produced by L.A. Theatre Works and I am a fan. I hope to one day sit in the audience.

I found this dramatization of The Hound of the Baskervilles to be outstanding. I loved every how every character was portrayed as well as the radio drama feel of the recording. If you’re a Sherlock fan like me, waiting for the next season is maddening. Pick up a copy of this audio drama. It will make you see that you’re attracted to Sherlock Holmes and his mysteries for more just Benedict Cumberbatch. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes mysteries translate very well to all mediums. Audio drama is by no means the least.

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I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long winter. While I did take a trip to Atlanta in February, I am feeling cooped up. I need to get the heck out of the Noke. Aren’t I lucky that the Virginia Festival of the Book is this week and they are hosting an audiobook extravaganza tomorrow?

Karen White! Barbara Rosenblat! Sean Pratt! Shannon Parks! Andi Arndt! And all of them just a short two hour drive from home! I am such a lucky duck! You can be assured that I will be reporting back next week.

Many thanks to the Audio Publishers Association for hosting this event and making me one happy woman!

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Getting back into the swing of things each week is hard. So is finding the quiet time to write a review over the weekend. In order to ease out of the weekend, I’ve decided to begin my blogging week with a mini review.

What I liked about this book was getting to know a little bit about the significant people in Edith Wharton’s life, such as her husband, her beloved assistant, and a few of her literary friends. The Age of Desire did an excellent job of providing atmosphere and highlighting Edith’s interests, strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, Edith’s age of desire left me wanting. I was starting to disengage with the novel by the time this aspect of the story kicked into high gear. Edith’s suitor was as fickle as she was and I had misgivings about the whole affair. I had anticipated then the novel redeeming itself by exploring what she learned through the experience. This was not to be so.

I had high hopes for The Age of Desire, but unfortunately I found myself struggling to even finish the book. I couldn’t even work up the energy to throw the book against the wall when I read Edith’s takeaway from her affair. If you’re interested in Edith Wharton’s life, I would suggest a biography.

At nineteen, Annie Black abandons California for a London winter of drinking to oblivion and looking for love in the wrong places. Twenty years later, she is a happily married mother of three living in San Francisco. Then one morning, a photograph arrives in her mailbox, and an old obsession is awakened.

After a return trip to London, Annie’s marriage falters, her store floods, and her son, Robbie, takes a night-time ride that nearly costs him his life. Now Annie must fight to save her family by untangling the mysteries of that reckless winter in Europe that drew an invisible map of her future.

With the brilliant pacing and emotional precision that won Jan Ellison an O. Henry Prize for her first published story, A Small Indiscretion announces a major new voice in suspense fiction as it unfolds a story of denial, obsession, love, forgiveness—and one woman’s reckoning with her own fateful mistakes.

My Review

Who would think that something that happened twenty years ago, at a time when you were young and full of mistakes, would come back to ruin a nearly perfect life you’ve built for yourself since? Certainly not Annie Black. When she opens a letter containing a picture taken during her time in London when she was nineteen, it was as if her life in San Francisco with a devoted husband and three healthy children no longer mattered. She became obsessed with the unfinished business she left behind. It didn’t take long before living for her past had a disastrous impact on her family, most especially with her son Robbie. As she tells her seriously injured son the story of how her family came to this place, the reader begins to understand the connections.

Taking this journey with Annie was an interesting experience. As someone who is the same age as the character, I know there are many things I would have changed at twenty if I had more life experience at the time. You have to be able to forgive and move past your early failings. You learn to appreciate how much you’ve learned and changed over the years. As Annie was drawn into some unanswered questions from her past, it made me think back to those raw spots that never fully healed over. If I had the opportunity to talk to the people involved, would I? Would those answers be worth returning there to find out? Shouldn’t it be enough to appreciate the gifts life has given you? I am by no means as adventurous a person as Annie and I understood how formative and critical her time in Europe was, but I couldn’t help get frustrated with her choices.

Kathe Mazur narrated the audiobook version of A Small Indiscretion and it made for a great experience. Through her I could see Annie sitting next to her son’s bed confessing the mistakes of her past and her present. Her performance was warm and I had no difficulty following the shifts in time as I listened. The voices she used worked well for me and added a spark to the story. I enjoyed every minute of this audiobook.

While the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped it would be, I enjoyed reading this book. A Small Indiscretion raised a lot of questions for me along the way and it would make an interesting book club selection, especially if the book club had a broad age range. I would be interested in hearing how younger readers would react to Annie and her life. Regardless, this book would spark a good conversation. Keep this book in mind when making book club selections. It would also make for a good choice when you’re feeling contemplative. When the time comes, I recommend picking up the audiobook and taking the journey with Kathe Mazur.

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Getting back into the swing of things each week is hard. So is finding the quiet time to write a review over the weekend. In order to ease out of the weekend, I’ve decided to begin my blogging week with a mini review.

I love Sarah Waters. I have enjoyed each and every one of the books she’s written, so I was very excited to discover that another title was being published last fall. What started as excitement turned to downright giddiness when I learned that Juliet Stevenson was narrating the audiobook. I made sure that I was ready to start a new audiobook immediately when it was released. It’s not every day that a beloved author and narrator come together.

The novel begins on the day that Frances Wray and her widowed mother allow a newly married couple to move into their home. Accustomed to a pampered life, Mr. Wray’s death left them with the knowledge that he’d mismanaged the family fortune. Francis, 26 and single, took on all levels of household management, but they still needed “paying guests” to keep their house. While Mrs. Wray was concerned about the social implications of doing so, the arrival of Len and his wife Lillian caused much more upheaval than anyone could ever have imagined.

Juliet Stevenson continues to impress with her narration of this novel. I enjoyed her pacing and tone throughout. Her voices are fantastic. I needed no other queue as to who was speaking at any given time. As with her work on Trespass by Rose Tremain, it was during scenes of high emotion where the power of Stevenson’s narration truly shined. Listening to those moments alone was worth the price of the audiobook.

I really enjoyed The Paying Guests. With Juliet Stevenson at the helm, this was one of my favorite reads of 2014. Here’s to many more new books from Sarah Waters.

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Getting back into the swing of things each week is hard. So is finding the quiet time to write a review over the weekend. In order to ease out of the weekend, I’ve decided to begin my blogging week with a mini review.

In the 12th grade I was assigned The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I hated it. What I remember about that novel today are extreme boredom and endless travel down an African river. Until I read State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, I attributed my feelings to Conrad and his writing style. While listening to Patchett’s novel, however, I came to realize that I didn’t care for novels dealing with the exploration and exploitation of isolated areas and tribes. Imagine my surprise (and I admit initial dismay) when I picked up this audiobook without reading the description and started listening because of the narrators. Let no one ever say that audiobook lovers aren’t an adventurous lot.

Euphoria tells the story of Nell Stone, an accomplished American anthropologist in New Guinea with Finn, her less accomplished Australian anthropologist husband, and Andrew Bankson, an English anthropologist hiding from his life. Nell and Finn have just fled an angry tribe when they meet up with Bankson. They are ill and Nell has a broken ankle. Bankson is physically whole and healthy, but he is not a well man himself. Unlike other novels dealing with similar subject, what transpires after these three anthropologists meet kept me fascinated throughout. Euphoria was a journey to experience.

As long time fans of both Simon Vance and Xe Sands, there was no doubt in my mind that I would listen to Euphoria, their first audiobook collaboration. I thought willfully jumping into the unknown might have been a mistake, however, as soon as I understood this book was about anthropologists in New Guinea. My apprehension was quickly laid to rest. Not only was the story itself fast paced and fascinating, both narrators were well suited for their characters and gave excellent performances. Xe Sands has a gift for portraying smart, talented women with hidden vulnerabilities. It was as if Sands struggled along with Nell as she tried desperately to control what happened when her work and her marriage collided. The haunted Bankson couldn’t have been narrated any better than by Simon Vance. While it may have been Vance’s vocal range that attracted me to his work, it was his emotional range that impressed me here. There was much more complexity to Bankson’s character than I had expected of a solitary bachelor anthropologist. Both Vance and Sands impressed me with the way they brought their characters to life. Better yet, their styles complemented each other and the novel as a whole. My excitement over this collaboration was well deserved.

Euphoria was for me all that State of Wonder promised to be. I highly recommend this audiobook, which is nominated for a 2015 Audie Award, and plan on checking out Lily King’s backlist.

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Sometimes all of the stresses of life seem to come at you from all angles. There are days when you have to run from emails, to working lunches, to oldest kid’s school, to the orthodontist, to the youngest kid’s school, and finally home to finish up the work day (purely hypothetical, right?). They leave you feeling like there’s just not enough of you to go around. Then, when you’re sitting at your laptop distracted as all get out, your beautiful girls, who have really found a blossoming friendship this winter, make you look up and see what’s really important in life. Instantly, my day was made.

Shortly thereafter I finished reading The Half-Blood Prince, but that’s a whole other story…